Floral Sculptures & Endangered Species

Thu, 06 Jan 2011

New CEC member Richard Fischer has been nominated for the Prix Pictet in photography and sustainability.

Photo: Richard Fischer

The IUCN Commission on Education and Communication is pleased to welcome award-winning photographer Richard Fischer as a new CEC member. Richard was recently nominated for the Prix Pictet, the world’s leading prize in photography and sustainability. The Prix Pictet has a unique mandate – to use the power of photography to communicate vital messages to a global audience. The goal is to uncover art of the highest order, applied to confront the pressing social and environmental challenges of the new millennium.

"Many admirers of flowers see in each specimen a singular and unique beauty and derive from it aesthetic and emotional pleasure," Richard writes, "But flowers are also expressions of survival in a fragile world: they exist for plants to reproduce, to feed upon, to make their lives and those of others possible. This evolution, this duality of life is the moment I capture and commemorate. I therefore invite you to reflect on each image to grasp this miracle. Because then it may change your life."

'Endangered Species' is Richard Fischer's exclusive collection. In alliance with one of the world´s largest collections of endangered flowers, he is exclusively supplied with these treasured species for photographic assignments. Fischer´s concept covers a wide range of flora. Each specimen is unique in its beauty, and most of them are threatened to extinction within a time period of just one generation. “Flowers have always represented beauty at its most natural and fleeting – so it is terrible to know that some of the most beautiful specimens in the world are about to be lost forever,” said Fischer. “I therefore felt compelled to do something, to document as many as I can, and to celebrate their radiance before they have disappeared.”

The origins of Fischer’s flowers range from the Amazon basin to the high damp ranges of the Central American jungles to the island of Madagascar and the Asian continent. Photographs of most of these specimens can be found only in scientific catalogs. Fischer’s concept goes beyond the science to capture their essence and present it for what it is: beauty in its simplest form, mysterious and powerful.

Scientists estimate that many of Fischer’s flowers will have become extinct within our lifetime. Richard Fischer first started photographing flowers in 2002, and has won numerous international awards for his work. Critics have hailed his work as “masterpieces of photographic art” and likened to “Floral Sculptures". He lives and works in Germany.

FS&ES, Floral Sculptures & Endangered Species Society

The FS&ES Society was founded in 2010. At its center is one of the largest art collections for endangered flower species worldwide. Its main objective is to foster and promote circulation of the exhibition-event for worldwide performance to create awareness for sensitive and endangered flora through large format and exclusive photographic images by artist Richard Fischer. The artist has dedicated his art and life to enable Floral Sculptures & Endangered Species to rotate as new images are continuesly photographed in his studio and added to the collection. Images are available within Limited Fine Art prints. Through the sale of fine art prints, a percentage of sales are returned to Botanical Gardens suppling Richard Fischer with plant species for conservation of endangered flora. Sponsorship for future exhibitions is welcome.

The United Nations invited Fischer to exhibit his work at the Palais des Nations, where 96,000 visitors viewed the collection within 16 days in April 2010. An exhibition was held in China's second-largest museum, the Museum of Art in Ningbo, for International Environment Day 2008. Fischer's work is exhibited in galleries accross the globe.